The colleague at the next desk may have ChatGPT open in a tab, on a personal account. This morning they pasted in the minutes of a client meeting to get a clean summary. They saved twenty minutes, and nobody will know: not you, not the IT department.<\/p>\n
This is what we call Shadow AI. In French-speaking Switzerland, 27% of people who use AI at work do so without their employer’s approval, according to the Qualinsight study published in spring 2026. And that figure only counts those who are willing to admit it.<\/p>\n
In this article, we look at what Shadow AI is, why it is spreading, what risks it creates and how to manage it without slowing down the people who benefit from it. What we have learned in our assignments fits in one sentence: you need a framework and tools, and one does not work without the other.<\/p>\n
Do you use AI tools at work that your organisation does not provide? No study measures this across Switzerland yet. We are running an anonymous<\/strong> survey of 7 questions, open until 31 December 2026, with results published on 15 January 2027.<\/p>\n